Oh, Doctor Beeching... if you could see us now - BBC News BBC News Oh, Doctor Beeching... if you could see us now By Shaun Ley Presenter, BBC Radio 4 23 April 2016 Image copyright GWR Image caption The train line at Dawlish runs right along the coast Two people have been on my mind lately: Isambard Kingdom Brunel and Richard Beeching. Because of a combination of work assignments and family commitments, I've been taking the train between London and Devon quite often. Rail was the broadband of its day, a faster form of communication than any of its predecessors, connecting the previously remote, creating opportunities for commerce and leisure. In a county such as Devon, it was a messy business. The engineering challenge was formidable. Last week, I sat on a train working its way along the southern coast. With the sea wall below my eye line, it was easy to imagine we were skimming the water itself. You may remember the television pictures of this stretch of line, at Dawlish , swinging in the wind, the result of storm damage in February 2014. It is hard not to be impressed by Brunel's audacity in constructing the line right on the very edge of the land.

Image copyright Hulton Archive/Getty Images Image caption Brunel's influence on the English landscape is still evident today. The Clifton Suspension Bridge spanning the Avon Gorge was designed by him and completed in 1864 after his death In his time, rivalry between the various companies hoping to exploit this vast new market resulted in competing lines. In the sparsely populated north of Devon, there were two alternative routes for travellers, still in existence into the mid-1960s. On their honeymoon, my parents travelled to London from a tiny village without having to change train once. A decade earlier, the network had been nationalised. Company initials such as GWR (Great Western Railway), which to some speak of the romance of steam - God's Wonderful Railway, though contemporary travellers probably had their own less flattering versions - vanished, and gradually the route map shrank. It is not hard to see why Richard Beeching reached the conclusion the network was unsustainable. By the 1950s, the car was king, giving new freedom to the average traveller who until then had been at the mercy of someone else's timetable.

British Rail began losing money - £15.6m in 1956; four years later, it lost £42m. As The Economist magazine reminded its readers recently, when the new town of Milton Keynes was being built it was constructed on a system of roundabouts - a new station was not deemed necessary, even though there would be hundreds of thousands of people moving into what had previously been an area of villages and small towns. In his 1963 report , Beeching recommended closing one third of the track, and more than 2,000 stations. He insisted it was "surgery, not mad chopping", essential if rail was to become profitable, the instruction the government had given him. Had his proposals been implemented in full, the railways would have linked large centres of population and important destinations for freight, but not much else. Image copyright Getty Images Image caption Dr Beeching was chairman of the British Railways Board. He produced his controversial report in 1963 Although some closures proved politically untenable, in my native north Devon, as in so many other areas (and not just rural ones), the network withered.

By the late 1970s, when I first took a train to London, a long winding car journey was the prelude; the direct line to the nearest large station, Taunton, had been closed a decade before. One local train service did survive, a branch line that dawdled slowly through the countryside between Barnstaple and Exeter. In the summer, nipping between shade and sunshine under the dappled cover of trees, it was - and still is - a beautiful journey. Stations such as Portsmouth Arms - named after the adjacent pub - remind you of the variety of functions rail used to serve. Its existence, though, was precarious, and whether under state control or post-privatisation, its future always seemed to be in doubt. The other local train was a ghost train. The Lynton and Barnstaple Railway did exactly what it said it did, delivering visitors to the picturesque village perched on the coast. But Beeching cannot be blamed for its closure. It had ceased to exist well before World War Two, the track ripped up, the engines and carriages sold off.

Revival was a dream, nursed by enthusiasts with time on their hands, possessing ambition but little in the way of official support. Image caption The BBC sitcom Oh, Doctor Beeching! was set in 1963 at and around the fictional Hatley Station, which was threatened with closure under the Beeching cuts Yet something has happened since the 1980s that few would have predicted. Rail has made a comeback, and some of those ghost stations have been brought back to life. When a new road was built across Exmoor, connecting the area to the M5 motorway, it stimulated demand from those wanting to live and work close by. Parkway rail stations, an early iteration of integrated transport, were designed to serve passengers who owned cars but didn't want a long commute. With much fanfare, British Rail unveiled Tiverton Parkway, a new mainline station on the edge of Exmoor in 1986, while the new road was still under construction. The buildings were certainly new; the station wasn't. It had opened first as Sampford Peverell station in 1928, and been abandoned in 1964.

First Great Western, which runs trains in the south-west of England, recently launched its own appeal to the past . Some have derided its new livery as a marketing exercise - First Great Western had an unenviable reputation among some of its users. Still, God's Wonderful Railway, GWR, is running again. Image copyright GWR Image caption First Great Western has rebranded as Great Western Railway Branch lines, too, have enjoyed a revival. The Barnstaple-Exeter route is now known as the Tarka Line, a branding exercise aimed at tourists, the lifeblood of the region. Many stations, long since unmanned, now have volunteers to sweep the platforms, fill the flower baskets and shine up the heritage plaques. The rolling stock is not quite so appealing - two or three old carriages that look like buses on the inside in the winter, supplemented during the summer with extra carriages and lots of room for tourist bikes and suitcases. But looking out at the view the other day, it occurred to me how branch lines are one of the factors that can catalyse new development. As broadband spreads, places close to a rail link become increasingly attractive areas in which to live.

The Economist reported that, as part of a deal to construct new housing in Tavistock, the developer is contributing £11.5m towards a rail link into Plymouth, restoring one of the Beeching-era cuts. Of course, new demand creates tensions, and not just over construction. The North Devon Journal recently carried a letter from an irate businesswoman, fed up with not being able to get home after late meetings in London. She argued that intermediate stops should be cut out so the service could be speeded up and better integrated with the mainline at Exeter. The regular customers - students, shoppers, those with jobs in Exeter - might not see the service in the same way. Yet she and they share a common interest in ensuring it survives. It is worth recalling that prominent incomers, including the late Lord George, the former governor of the Bank of England, helped to save the night sleeper service to Cornwall when it was slated for closure. Image copyright Alamy Image caption The Lynton to Barnstaple line closed in 1935, but part of the line - and Woody Bay Station - reopened in 2004 What of the Lynton and Barnstaple Railway?

Local legend has it that it ran so slowly you could jump off at the front, pick flowers, and still have time to jump back on at the end. Progress in reviving it has been similarly time consuming, and there were plenty of sceptics locally who thought restoring it was a pipe dream. Quietly, though, its supporters have been buying up parcels of land along the old line as they come on the market. The appropriately named Woody Bay has a working station once again. It carried more than 48,000 passengers in 2015, if only for a distance of one mile. Last month, a planning application was submitted to extend the line by a further four and a half miles, almost a quarter of the original length. In 1963, Richard Beeching was probably correct in his analysis that the existing rail network could not be sustained. Yet even heavily used commuter lines still struggle to generate commercially attractive rates of profit, and public subsidy is almost as ubiquitous as it ever was. It is understandable that politicians and taxpayers think the cost should be borne increasingly by the user instead. Still, rail is in part a community service and some communities would wither and die without it.

As I've both thundered and dawdled through the Devon countryside in recent weeks, the question on my mind has been whether conventional cost-benefit analysis gives proper weight to that. End of the lines: The rural railway resurgence 50 years after Beeching | UK | News | Daily Express UK End of the lines: The rural railway resurgence 50 years after Beeching AROUND 9,000 protesters came to see the last train from Carlisle pulling in to the terminus in the Cumbrian town of Silloth. 04:24, Fri, Mar 22, 2013 The rural railways of the past are gone but not forgotten Dozens of teenagers sat on the line shouting “Remember it’s your line” while police had to remove detonators from the track in what was a vain attempt to hold up the engine for a precious few extra minutes. The local paper dubbed it the “great train robbery” but the decision had been made – yet another station, yet another line had been closed for ever from Britain’s sprawling rail network. The closure was in September 1964 and the blame was laid squarely at the feet of one man: Dr Richard Beeching.

His report – The Reshaping Of British Railways – on “modernising” the nationalised train system into an efficient, affordable publicly owned business was destined to alter the shape of rural Britain in a way that is still felt today, almost 50 years since it came out. Thousands of miles of track – mainly branch lines that provided one of the few means of transport for many rural villages and towns – and hundreds of stations were to be consigned to history in a brutal slashing of a system built in the white heat of Victorian optimism. It is impossible to think of a politician let alone a civil servant whose name is still held in such ignominy half a century later. The impression of Beeching as the heartless vandal resonated so much that 30 years after he left office, the BBC could still call a sitcom based on a rural branch line Oh Dr Beeching. The name of The Beechings even lives on infamously in the names of streets and houses located near disused stations. Yet in truth the Beeching axe as it was known was only continuing a slimming down of the rail industry that had been started 10 years earlier – albeit with greater speed and gusto.

And as the map on this page shows, a number of lines closed at the time are now being reopened as train travel expands to record levels. The extent of the cuts in the post-war period was astonishing as the passenger rail network contracted from 17,000 miles in 1948 to fewer than 9,000 in 1973. The fall in the number of stations open to passengers was even more dramatic, with a drop from 6,500 to just 2,355. The programme sparked anger and protest that saw communities fight to save their rail service in the Fifties and Sixties. The first sign of the battle that any government would have to close down the railways was seen on the Isle of Wight in 1951. There, more than 50 miles of track wended its way through Newport, Cowes, Sandown, Ryde, Ventnor and Freshwater. So important did locals feel the service was to the island’s tourism that the council hired a QC to put their case and successfully staved off some of the closures for more than 15 years. The Isle of Wight set the benchmark for surviving railway cuts, and inspired others.

Most famously, the Lewes to East Grinstead route – which became known as the Bluebell and Primrose Line – sawtwo fights. The line had limited use and seemed a certainty to be closed in June 1955 despite the efforts of local spinster and teacher Madge Bessemer. She had lived in a 14-bedroom mansion next to the line, was a stalwart of village life and fought tooth and nail to save the Bluebell (so called because she used to pick flowers on the trackside as a child). Dr Beeching is now remembered in infamy for axing the rail network The extent of the cuts in the post-war period was astonishing When the decision was taken to withdraw the passenger service officialdom had not fully appreciated the bulldog spirit of the formidable Ms Bessemer who found a legal loophole that forced the transport commission grudgingly to reopen what was described as the “sulky service”. The effect was only a stay of execution until 1958 but others were to follow in Ms Bessemer’s wake and increasingly passengers became better organised and more determined in their efforts.

Many were single station or small line campaigns, such as the fight for ill-fated Wells-next-the-Sea in Norfolk, which was earmarked for the axe despite significant errors in the government’s calculations. Others were grander, such as the Great Central Association which battled to save the 200 miles of line between Nottingham and Marylebone, London, and which meandered through the green fields and small towns of the Midlands and southern counties but foundered because of the strength of the rival LNER line. But the result was largely the same in the end – closure. Unless a line was making money or closing it would cause what the government regarded as great hardship, the age of the train was limited. Many of the worst hit were traditional holiday resorts with towns such as Porthcawl and Bude in Cornwall and Whitby and Richmond in Yorkshire losing all or most of their services. It is not hard to see why swathe of the country were up in arms over the closure policy. However, the government’s move to rationalise the railways needs to be put in context. The Treasury was trying to balance the books and many of the lines and stations were running at huge losses.

This was partly because of the huge overlap in services in some places dating back to Victorian times (amazingly the Isle of Wight had eight train companies). The train network was losing millions even in 1950 and with the popularity of the car rising and the cheapness of alternative buses, trains found it harder to compete. Passenger numbers dropped. As pro-road transport minister Ernest Marples noted at the time, in Westerham, Kent, more than 2,400 people had signed a petition to keep the local line open but only 167 people used the line regularly (it was to close and then be covered to make the M25). When the Shepherdswell to Wingham service in east Kent closed the railway’s local bosses could name the five regular users. Rural railways have long been consigned to such classics as The Railway Children The amount of freight being taken on the trains was also dropping as haulage firms were denationalised and grew rapidly as new roads were built. Throw in the cost of upgrading to electric lines, the problem of replacing old stock and ongoing safety issues (in one two-year period in the early Fifties there were 87 train fi res) and the cuts were inevitable.

IN 1965 Beeching put forward plans to slice the rail network to barely 3,000 miles of track. Politically it was impossible to stomach; Beeching resigned as chairman of the British Railways Board shortly afterwards, effectively marking the end of the cut and slash train policy. The strength of feeling against the shrinking of the rail system has remained to this day – from those who lived through the changes to later generations who know of it only through the poetry of John Betjeman and the romanticised vision of Britain in the Fifties seen in films such as The Railway Children. Reshaping the railways meant life in the country would never be the same again – and the effect in terms of decades of underinvestment in railways has become evident. However, in recent years, as roads have become more congested and car travel more expensive, the number of people on the trains has increased significantly. Hundreds of miles of track have been slowly reopened and stations refurbished. Today there are also more than 100 heritage lines – restored by enthusiasts and local volunteers to give a glimpse of the age of the steam train.

To their credit, Beeching and the train reformers faced up to the problem of how to modernise the rail system and make it affordable. What they misunderstood was how muchthe British people, just like the protesters in Silloth, loved their trains. ? To order Last Trains: Dr Beeching And The Death Of Rural England by Charles Loft (Biteback Books, £20), with free UK delivery, send a cheque made payable to Express Bookshop to: Last Trains Offer, PO Box 200, Falmouth TR11 4WJ or call 0871 988 8367 or buy online at expressbookshop.com. Calls cost 10p per minute from UK landlines. Most read in UK Beeching Axe | UK Transport Wiki | Fandom powered by Wikia Edit Although Dr Beeching is commonly associated with railway closures, a significant number of lines had actually closed before the 1960s, one of the earliest known being the closure of a section of the Newmarket and Chesterford Railway in 1851.

After growing rapidly in the 19th century, the British railway system reached its height in the years immediately before the First World War . In 1913 there were 23,440 route miles of railway. [3] After the war, the railways began to face competition from other modes of transport such as buses , cars , road haulage and air travel . Due to this, a modest number of railway lines were closed during the 1920 and 1930s. Most of these early closures were of the most marginal country branch lines such as the Charnwood Forest Railway , closed to passengers in 1931, and of short suburban lines which had fallen victim to competition from buses and trams which offered a more frequent service. An example of this was the Harborne Line in Birmingham , which closed to passengers in 1934. Also, a number of lines had been built by rival companies between the same places to compete with each other. With the grouping of railway companies in 1923, many of these duplicating lines became redundant and were closed.

In total 1,264 miles of railway were closed to passengers between 1923 and 1939. [3] With the onset of World War II , the railways gained a reprieve as they became essential to the war effort and were heavily used. By the time the railways were nationalised in 1948, they were in a substantially worn down condition, as little maintenance or investment was carried out during the war. Early closures under British Railways Edit By the early 1950s, railway closures began again. The British Transport Commission (BTC) created the 'Branch Lines Committee' in 1949, with a remit to close the least used branch lines. Many of the most minor and little used lines were closed during this period. However some secondary cross country lines were closed as well such as the Midland and Great Northern Joint Railway in East Anglia , which was closed in 1959. In total 3,318 miles of railway were closed between 1948 and 1962.

[3] This period saw the beginnings of a closures protest movement led by the Railway Development Association , whose most famous member was the poet John Betjeman . [4] 1955 modernisation Edit By the early 1950s, economic recovery and the end of fuel rationing meant the pre-war trends of increasing competition for the railways reasserted themselves as more people could afford cars and road haulage could compete for freight. The railways struggled to adapt. Britain's railways had fallen behind other countries. In an attempt to catch up, the British Transport Commission (BTC) unveiled the Modernisation Plan in 1955, which proposed to spend more than £1,240 million on modernising the railways (£ Template:Formatprice as of Template:CURRENTISOYEAR ) Template:Inflation-fn , replacing steam with diesel and electric locomotives . The plan promised to win back traffic and restore the railways to profit by 1962. [5] Much of the Modernisation Plan was approved. Traffic on the railways remained fairly steady during the 1950s, [6] however the economics of the railway network steadily deteriorated.

This was largely due to costs such as labour rising faster than income. [4] [6] Fares and freight charges were repeatedly frozen by the government in an attempt to control inflation and please the electorate. [4] The result was that by 1955 income no longer covered operating costs, and the situation steadily worsened. Much of the money spent on the Modernisation Plan had been borrowed, and much was wasted. By the early 1960s the railways were in financial crisis. Operating losses increased to £68m in 1960, £87m in 1961, and £104m in 1962 (£ Template:Formatprice as of Template:CURRENTISOYEAR ). [7] Template:Inflation-fn The BTC could no longer pay interest on borrowed money, which worsened the financial problem. The government lost patience and looked for radical solutions.

File:British Rail timetable page from 1963 illustrating Beeching Axe in progress.jpg In tune with the mood of the early 1960s, the transport minister in Harold Macmillan 's Conservative government was Ernest Marples , director of a road-construction company (his two-thirds shareholding was divested to his wife while he was a minister to avoid potential conflict of interests). [8] [9] Marples believed the future of transport lay with roads, that railways were a relic of the Victorian past. An advisory group known as the Stedeford Committee after its chairman, Sir Ivan Stedeford , was set up to report on the state of British transport and provide recommendations. Also on the committee was Richard Beeching, at the time technical director of ICI . He was later, in 1961, appointed chairman of the new British Railways Board. Stedeford and Beeching clashed on matters related to the latter's proposals to prune the rail infrastructure.

In spite of questions in Parliament, Sir Ivan's report was published only much later, and the proposals for the future of the railways that came to be known as the Beeching Plan were adopted by the government, resulting in the closure of a third of the rail network and the scrapping of a third of a million freight wagons. Beeching believed railways should be a business and not a public service, and that if parts of the railway system did not pay their way — like some rural branch lines — they should close. His reasoning was that once unprofitable lines were closed, the remaining system would be restored to profitability. Beeching I File:Beeching axe 1 and NUR response.jpg When Beeching was chairman of British Railways he initiated a study of traffic flows on all the railway lines in the country. This study took place during the week ending 23 April 1962, two weeks after Easter, and concluded that 30 per cent of miles carried just 1 per cent of passengers and freight, and half of all stations contributed just 2 per cent of income.

[4] The report The Reshaping of British Railways [10] (or Beeching I report) of 27 March 1963 proposed that of Britain's Template:Convert/mi of railway, Template:Convert/mi of mostly rural branch and cross-country lines should close. Further, many other rail lines should be kept open for freight only, and many lesser-used stations should close on lines that were to be kept open. The report was accepted by the Government. At the time, the controversial report was called the Beeching Bombshell or the Beeching Axe by the press. It sparked an outcry from communities that would lose their rail services, many of which (especially in the case of rural communities) had no other public transport. The government argued that many services could be provided more cheaply by buses , and promised that abandoned rail services would have their places taken by bus services. A significant part of the report proposed that British Rail electrify some major main lines and adopt containerised freight traffic instead of outdated and uneconomic wagon-load traffic.

Some of those plans were eventually adopted, however, such as the creation of the Freightliner concept and further electrification of the West Coast Main Line from Crewe to Glasgow in 1974. Additionally the staff terms and conditions were improved over time. Rail closures by year File:Rugby Central station remains2.jpg At its peak in 1950, British Railway's system was around Template:Convert/mi and 6,000 stations. By 1975, the system had shrunk to Template:Convert/mi of track and 2,000 stations; it has remained roughly this size thereafter. Closures of unremunerative lines had been ongoing throughout the 20th century. Numbers increased in the 1950s, as the Branchline Committee of BR also looked for uncontentious duplicated lines as candidates for closure. Approximately Template:Convert/mi of line had already been closed between nationalisation and the publication of Beeching's report. [11] After publication, however, the closure process was accelerated markedly. Year Edit Not all the recommended closures were implemented; a number of lines were kept open for political reasons.

For example, lines through the Scottish Highlands such as the Far North Line and the West Highland Line , although listed for closure, were kept open, in part because of pressure from the powerful Highland lobby. [3] The Central Wales Line was said to have been kept open because it passed through so many marginal constituencies that no one dared to close it. [3] [4] In addition, lines such as the Tamar Valley Line in Cornwall were kept open because the local roads were poor. Some lines not recommended for closure were eventually closed, such as the Woodhead Line between Manchester and Sheffield in 1981, after the freight traffic, on which it had relied, declined. Beeching II File:Beeching2.svg In February 1965, the British Railways Board issued a second, less well-known, report The Development of the Major Railway Trunk Routes, [12] informally known as Beeching II. This report identified lines which were believed to justify large-scale investment to meet the likely demand over the next 20 years. Some railway supporters assumed that any other line would be closed sooner or later, although the report itself was careful to explain that no decision had been taken about them.

("The purpose of this study is to select routes for future intensive use, not to select lines for closure...") As the map shows, if all the non-selected lines had eventually closed the railway network would have been reduced significantly. The length of the "primary routes" alone would have fallen from some 12,000 km to just under 5000 km. In Scotland only the central belt routes and the lines via Fife and Perth to Aberdeen might have survived, and apart from the Great Western Main Line as far as Swansea, there could have been no British Railways lines left in Wales at all. As far as England was concerned, parts of Yorkshire and most of East Anglia and south west England would have been without railway services as well. Oxford would have kept its trains, but Cambridge would not. Many towns in south east England could also have lost their railways in theory, including places like Hastings and Eastbourne, although as the report also conceded that commuter routes would need "special consideration", major closures in the south east were probably the most unlikely of all.

Beeching II: Major lines not selected for development All Scottish lines north of Glasgow , Perth , Dundee and Aberdeen and west of the West Coast Main Line In the event, this report does not seem to have made any lasting impression on the recently-elected Labour government, and Beeching resigned from BR two months after it was published. Major railway closures may have been considered afresh since Beeching's time, but apart from the brief ripple caused by the impotent Serpell Report in 1982, they have not been formally proposed again. Changing attitudes and policies Edit It was in 1964 that a Labour government was elected under Prime Minister Harold Wilson . During the election campaign, Labour promised to halt the rail closures if elected. Once elected, however, they quickly backtracked on this promise, and the closures continued, at a faster rate than under the previous administration and until the end of the decade. In 1965, Barbara Castle was appointed transport minister and she decided that at least 11,000 route miles (17,700 km) would be needed for the foreseeable future and that the railway system should be stabilised at around this size.

Towards the end of the 1960s it became increasingly clear that rail closures were not producing the promised savings or bringing the rail system out of deficit and were unlikely ever to do so. [3] Mrs. Castle also stipulated that some rail services that could not pay their way but had a valuable social role should be subsidised. However, by the time the legislation allowing this was introduced into the 1968 Transport Act , (Section 39 of this Act made provision for a subsidy to be paid by the Treasury for a three-year period) many of the services and railway lines that would have qualified and benefited from these subsidies had already been closed or removed, thus lessening the impact of the legislation. Nevertheless, a number of branch lines were saved by this legislation. Aftermath File:Prospect Tunnel.jpg The closures failed in their main purpose of trying to restore the railways to profitability, with the promised savings failing to materialise. By closing almost a third of the rail network, Beeching managed to achieve a saving of just £30 million, whilst overall losses were running in excess of £100 million.

[4] The shortfall arose mainly because the branch lines acted as feeders to the main lines and that feeder traffic was lost when the branches closed. This in turn meant less traffic and less income for the increasingly vulnerable main lines. The assumption at the time[ citation needed ] was that car owners would drive to the nearest railhead (which was usually the junction where the closed branch line would otherwise have taken them) and continue their journey onwards by train. In practice having left home in their cars people used them for the whole journey. The same problem occurred with the movement of goods and freight: without branch lines, the railways' ability to transport goods 'door to door' was dramatically reduced. Like the passenger model, it was assumed that lorries would pick up goods, transport them to the nearest railhead, where they would be taken across the country by train, unloaded onto another lorry and taken to their destination. However, the development of the motorway network, the advent of containerisation , improvements in road haulage vehicles, and the economic costs of having two break-of-bulk points all combined to make long-distance road transport a more viable alternative.

Another reason for Beeching plan's not achieving any great savings was that many of the closed lines ran at only a small deficit. Some lines such as the Sunderland to West Hartlepool line cost only £291 per mile to operate. [3] Closures of such small-scale loss making lines made little difference to the overall deficit. Perhaps ironically the busiest commuter routes had always lost the greatest amount of money, but even Beeching realised it would be impractical to close them. [3] [4] The Beeching reports recommended against attempts to make loss-making lines profitable. Changes to light railway services (already in use on some branch lines at the time of the report) were attacked by Beeching, who wrote: "The third suggestion, that rail buses should be substituted for trains, ignores the high cost of providing the route itself, and also ignores the fact that rail buses are more expensive vehicles than road buses." There is little in the Beeching report recommending general economies (in administration costs, working practices and so on). For example, a number of the stations that were closed were fully staffed eighteen hours a day, on lines controlled by multiple Victorian era signalboxes (again fully staffed, often throughout the day).

Reductions in operating costs could have been made by reducing staff and removing redundant services on these lines whilst still enabling these stations to stay open. Such concepts have since been successfully utilised by British Rail and its successors on lesser-used lines that survived the axe (such as the East Suffolk Line from Ipswich to Lowestoft which survives as a "basic railway"). [4] However such recommendations were absent from the Beeching reports.[ citation needed ] In retrospect, many of the specific Beeching closures can be seen as very short-sighted. Many of the closed routes would now be heavily used, possibly even important trunk routes. The Settle-Carlisle Railway was threatened with closure, reprieved and now handles more traffic (both passenger and freight) than at any time in its history. The Great Central Main Line , the last trunk route built in Britain until the opening of High Speed 1 in 2007, was intended to provide a link to the north of England with a proposed Channel Tunnel . It was built to the wider Continental loading gauge and constructed to the same standards as a modern high speed line, with no level crossings and curves and gradients kept to an absolute minimum.

This line closed in stages between 1966 and 1969 after just 60 years of service, 28 years before the eventual opening of the Channel Tunnel rail link. Since the opening of the Channel Tunnel and High Speed 1 , there has been discussion about ' High Speed 2 ' linking the tunnel to the North of England and Scotland. While this route would have been served by a simple extension of the closed line's original function, it would now be very difficult and expensive to construct as much of the former GCML route has been levelled or built on ( see below ). Failures of bus-substitution Edit The " bustitution " policy which replaced rail services with buses also failed. In many cases the replacement bus services were far slower and less convenient than the train services they were meant to replace, resulting in them being extremely unpopular with the public. [4] Replacement bus services were often simply run between the (now disused) station sites, robbing the replacement service of any potential advantage over the closed rail service a bus service might have had. Most replacement bus services only lasted a few years before they were removed due to a lack of patronage[ citation needed ], leaving large parts of the country with no public transport service.

Final closures under Beeching Edit The closures were brought to a halt in the early 1970s when it became apparent that they were not useful. The small amount of money saved by closing railways was outweighed by the congestion and pollution caused by increasing reliance on cars which followed, and also by the general public unrest caused by the cuts. The 1973 oil crisis brought a final end of large scale railway closures, by highlighting the need for an energy efficient - and widespread – public transport network. One of the last major railway closures (and possibly one of the most controversial) resulting from the Beeching Axe was of the 98-mile long (158 km) Waverley Route main line between Carlisle , Hawick and Edinburgh , in 1969. Plans have since been made in 2006 with the approval of the Scottish Parliament to re-open a significant section of this line. With a few exceptions, after the early 1970s proposals to close other lines were met with vociferous public opposition and were quietly shelved. This opposition likely stemmed from the public's experience of the many line closures during the main years of the cuts in the mid and late 1960s.

Today, many of Britain's railways still run at a deficit and require subsidies. Disposals of land and structures Edit Many of the areas along lines closed by the Beeching Axe have expanded and grown over the last 40 years. Where some lines were not profitable in 1963 (on a backdrop of falling passenger numbers and a rise in car use on uncongested roads) it seems likely that they could be profitable now.[ citation needed ] Many could certainly have a desirable impact on reducing road congestion and pollution, as well as relieving congestion on the railway lines that have remained open. However, in many instances it would be prohibitively expensive for these axed routes to be reopened. Beeching's reports made no stipulation for the handling of land after line closures, however throughout the 20th century British Rail operated a policy of disposing land which was surplus to requirement as a source of income. Many bridges, cuttings and embankments have been removed from former lines and the land sold off for development. Closed station buildings on remaining lines have often been either demolished or sold.

Increasing pressure on land use in the UK throughout the 20th century meant that protection of closed trackbeds as in larger countries (such as the US Rail Bank scheme which holds former railway land for possible future use) was not practical. Many redundant structures from closed lines remain, such as bridges over other lines and drainage culverts. These often require ongoing maintenance as part of the rail infrastructure while providing no benefit. In these cases the costs have not been saved by closing lines, demonstrating an aspect of the reports' short-sighted approach. Track rationalisation Edit One effect of the Beeching closures was the reduction of some formerly double track sections of line to single tracks, an example being the section of line from Bicester to Princes Risborough . After the closure of the GCR and subsequent singling works, all of the stations on the remaining line were reduced to a single platform until the line was re-doubled by Chiltern Railways in the early part of the 21st century. Again this demonstrates inconsistencies in the rail rationalisation undertaken. Another example is the Kyle of Lochalsh Line from Inverness to Dingwall .

Reduced capacity on this line is now the major barrier to increasing the number of trains on the Far North Line from Inverness to Thurso and Wick . The West of England Main Line (the LSWR line, not the GWR line), formerly an express route from London to the South-West, was largely reduced to a single track west of Salisbury and effectively reduced to a secondary cross-country line, since at national level it was viewed as duplicating the Great Western Main Line . Some road schemes have been prioritised over existing rail lines requiring lines to be reduced to single tracks. The Shrewsbury to Chester Line from Chester to Wrexham General line has a dual carriageway bridge on the A483 over the railway where space was only left for a single track. This constraint on the network now hampers frequency and timekeeping on the north-south Wales railway service. Capacity problems exist on some lines, many of which now carry much greater volumes of passengers than during the time of the report.[ citation needed ] Traffic on the single track Golden Valley Line between Kemble and Swindon and the Cotswold Line between Oxford and Worcester has increased significantly and a dual track line is now being reinstated here.

On the Cotswold line, there are now twice as many trains trying to run on the single track than in the 1960s after singling, this route is also now being partially reinstated as a dual track. Punctuality and reliability can be harder to achieve on single lines. Delays are compounded when trains have to wait for a passing train to clear a single line section. Journey times are extended as waiting time and catch up time is added to the timetable. A journey from London to Worcester takes much longer today than before rationalisation,[ citation needed ] in spite of faster rolling stock. Serpell Report Main article: Serpell Report In the early 1980s, under the government of Margaret Thatcher , the possibility of more Beeching-style cuts was raised again, briefly. In 1983 Sir David Serpell, a civil servant who had worked with Dr Beeching, compiled what became known as the Serpell Report [13] which set out a number of options. It is important to distinguish Beeching from Serpell: Beeching recommended closures and Serpell did not.

However Serpell did allege that a profitable railway (if that was the aim) could only be achieved by closing much of what remained. The infamous "Option A" in this report was illustrated by a map of a truly vestigial system with, for example, no railways west of Bristol and none in Scotland apart from the central belt. This was much more than Beeching had ever dared to suggest. Serpell was shown to have some serious weaknesses, such as the closure of the Midland Main Line (a busy route for coal transport to power stations), and even the East Coast Main Line between Berwick-upon-Tweed and Edinburgh, part of the key London/Edinburgh link. The report met with fierce resistance from many quarters and, having lost credibility, it was quickly abandoned. Reopenings Edit Since the Beeching cuts of the 1960s, road traffic levels have grown significantly and in some areas this has become close to gridlock. Furthermore, in recent years there have been record levels of passengers on the railways. A modest number of the railway closures have therefore been reversed. In addition a small but significant number of closed stations have reopened, and passenger services been restored on lines where they had been removed.

Many of these were in the urban metropolitan counties where Passenger Transport Executives have a role in promoting local passenger rail use. London Edit After studies instigated by the now-defunct Greater London Council , the Snow Hill tunnel , south of Farringdon station , was reopened for passenger use in 1988, providing a link between the Midland Main Line , from St Pancras station , and the former Southern Railway , via London Bridge station . This line, named Thameslink , now provides a north-south cross London rail link and it has been highly successful, providing a spine of service from Bedford to Brighton . Although its closure was not as a result of Beeching, its success demonstrates the possibilities for rail expansion, in contradiction of Beeching's approach. Since May 2010, Transport for London has restored most of the section of line which once connected Broad Street and Dalston Junction , as part of its East London Line project on the Overground network . South East Edit Part of the Varsity Line (closed in 1967 but not mentioned by Beeching), the Oxford to Bicester Line was reopened in 1987 by the Network SouthEast sector of British Rail.

Full re-opening of the Western section of the Varsity line looks likely to happen by 2028. The Chiltern Main Line was redoubled in two stages between 1998 and 2002 between Princes Risborough and Aynho Junction . Chandler's Ford in Hampshire opened its new railway station in 2003, on the Romsey to Eastleigh link which had closed to passengers in 1969. Part of the London to Aylesbury Line was extended north along the former Great Central Main Line to a brand new station called Aylesbury Vale Parkway which opened in December 2008. East Midlands Edit A notable reopening is the Robin Hood Line in Nottinghamshire , between Nottingham and Worksop via Mansfield , which reopened in the early 1990s. Previously Mansfield had been the largest town in Britain without a rail link. More immediate reopenings occurred on the Lincoln to Peterborough line . The section between Peterborough and Spalding closed to passengers on 5 October 1970 and re-opened on 7 June 1971.

North of Spalding , Ruskington Station re-opened on 5 May 1975. Metheringham Station followed on 6 October 1975. West Midlands Edit In the West Midlands a new Birmingham Snow Hill station was opened in 1987 to replace the earlier Snow Hill station. The tunnel underneath Birmingham city centre that served the station was also reopened, along with the line towards Kidderminster and Worcester . This introduced a new service between Birmingham and London, terminating at Marylebone . The former line from Snow Hill to Wolverhampton has been reopened as the Midland Metro tram system. The line from Coventry to Nuneaton was reopened to passengers in 1988. Despite the successful and potential re-opening of many rail routes as light-rail and metro lines, the concept is still under-threat due to the varying popularity of these schemes with successive governments. The Walsall–Hednesford line was reopened to passenger traffic in 1989 and extended to Rugeley in 1997. However, regular passenger services were terminated between Walsall and Wolverhampton in 2008 on cost and efficiency grounds.

South Wales Edit Beeching saw South Wales as a declining industrial region. As a result, it lost the majority of its network. Since 1983 it has experienced a major rail revival, with 32 new stations such as Llanharan , and four lines reopened within 20 miles (32 km) of each other: Abercynon–Aberdare , Barry–Bridgend via Llantwit Major , Bridgend–Maesteg and the Ebbw Valley Railway via Newbridge . Scotland Edit In Scotland , a four-mile (6.4 km) section of the Argyle Line was reopened in December 2005, serving Chatelherault , Merryton and Larkhall for the first time since 1968. After several years of 'false' starts dating to the 1980s, the railway from Stirling to Alloa reopened on 19 May 2008, providing a passenger (and freight on to Kincardine) route once again after a 40 year gap.

A 35-mile (56 km) stretch of the former Waverley Route between Edinburgh and Galashiels via Dalkeith is expected to be reopened in 2014 now that funding has been approved. The closure of the line in 1969 left the Scottish Borders area without any rail links. In 2007, a campaign was begun to open the East Fife Coast Line from Kirkcaldy to Leven and maybe even on to St Andrews . Laurencekirk station on the mainline between Arbroath and Aberdeen was shut in 1967 but 42 years later in May 2009 it was reopened. This was the 77th new or reopened station in Scotland since 1970 - others include Gretna Green , Dyce and New Cumnock - all closed in the mid 1960s but reinstated. Heritage railways The BBC TV comedy series, Oh, Doctor Beeching! , which ran from 1995–1997, was set in a small fictional branch line railway station threatened with closure under the Beeching Axe.

British rock band I Like Trains wrote a song called The Beeching Report, criticising Beeching's reforms. Flanders and Swann , writers and performers of satirical songs, wrote a lament for lines closed by the Beeching Axe entitled " Slow Train ". In the satirical magazine Private Eye , the column on railway issues, "Signal Failures", is written under the pseudonym "Dr. B. Ching" as a reference to the report. A BBC Four programme, 'Ian Hislop Goes Off the Rails' was written about the Beeching Report and its impact on the British railway network, and was first aired on 2 October 2008. It achieved the second highest audience to date for any BBC Four programme (and the highest for a documentary) with 1.3 million viewers.

It made several claims about the Beeching Report, its conception, execution and aftermath; for instance, suggesting that Ernest Marples, then Minister for Transport, was a controversial figure who would not have survived in Government today, under Conflict of Interest rules alone.[ citation needed ] Eyewitnesses Template:Who to the Beeching Report and the events as they unfolded described a bold and determined attempt to streamline and cut costs, marred by a lack of foresight and erratic judgements, hurriedly gathered and poorly collated research and perhaps reckless decision making.[ citation needed ] The programme claimed that a frantic public relations exercise was carried out to encourage the public to accept the changes, and that British Rail even hired the actor and comedian Tony Hancock to present the face of the Beeching cuts; even that he was alleged to have been paid the equivalent of half of Beeching's wage. The programme left the viewer with the feeling that the whole exercise, while not being a total failure, had not achieved its goals.[ citation needed ] See also

Question: Which TV sitcom about a branch line station took its name from a former chairman of British Railways?
Answer: OH, DOCTOR BEECHING!